in the same line as myself, and sells everything that I do (barring
green stuff.) She follows me always in what I sell. She has a stall,
and sits at the corner of the street. I have got three children. The
eldest is ten, and goes out with me to call my goods for me. I have had
inflammation in the lungs, and when I call my goods for a little while
my voice leaves me. My missis is lame. She fell down a cellar, when a
child, and injured her hip. Last October twelvemonth I was laid up with
cold, which settled on my lungs, and laid me in my bed for a month. My
missis kept me all that time. She was ‘working’ fresh herrings; and if
it hadn’t been for her we must all have gone into the workhouse. We
are doing very badly now. I have no work to do. I have no stock-money
to work with, and I object to pay 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for the loan of
10_s._ Once I gave a man 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for ten months for the
loan of 10_s._, and that nearly did me up. I have had 8_s._ of the
same party since, and paid 1_s._ a week for eight weeks for the loan
of it. I consider it most extortionate to have to pay 2_d._ a day for
the loan of 8_s._, and won’t do it. When the season gets a bit better
I shall borrow a shilling of one friend and a shilling of another, and
then muddle on with as much stock-money as I can scrape together. My
missis is at home now doing nothing. Last week it’s impossible to say
what she took, for we’re obliged to buy victuals and firing with it as
we take it. She can’t go out charing on account of her hip. When she is
out, and I am out, the children play about in the streets. Only last
Saturday week she was obligated to take the shoes off her feet to get
the children some victuals. We owe two weeks’ rent, and the landlord,
though I’ve lived in the house five years, is as sharp as if I was a
stranger.”
“Why, sir,” said another vegetable-dealer, who was a robust-looking
young man, very clean in his person, and dressed in costermonger
corduroy, “I can hardly say what my business is worth to me, for I’m
no scholard. I was brought up to the business by my mother. I’ve a
middling connection, and perhaps clear 3_s._ a day, every fine day, or
15_s._ or 16_s._ a week; but out of that there’s my donkey to keep,
which I suppose costs 6_d._ a day, that’s seven sixpences off. Wet or
fine, she must be fed, in coorse. So must I; but I’ve only myself to
keep at present, and I hire a lad when I want one. I work my own trap.
Then things is so uncertain. Why, now, look here, sir. Last Friday,
I think it was--but that don’t matter, for it often happens--fresh
herrings was 4_s._ the 500 in the morning, and 1_s._ 6_d._ at night,
so many had come in. I buy at Billingsgate-market, and sometimes of a
large shopkeeper, and at Covent-garden and the Borough. If I lay out
7_s._ in a nice lot of cabbages, I may sell them for 10_s._ 6_d._, or
if it isn’t a lucky day with me for 8_s._, or less. Sometimes people
won’t buy, as if the cholera was in the cabbages. Then turnips isn’t
such good sale yet, but they may be soon, for winter’s best for them.
There’s more bilings then than there’s roastings, I think. People like
broth in cold weather. I buy turnips by the ‘tally.’ A tally’s five
dozen bunches. There’s no confinement of the number to a bunch; it’s
by their size; I’ve known twelve, and I’ve known twice that. I sell
three parts of the turnips at 1_d._ a bunch, and the other part at
1-1/2_d._ If I get them at 3_s._ 6_d._ the tally I do well on turnips.
I go the same rounds pretty regularly every day, or almost every day. I
don’t object to wet weather so much, because women don’t like to stir
out then, and so they’ll buy of me as I pass. Carrots I do little in;
they’re dear, but they’ll be cheaper in a month or two. They always
are. I don’t work on Sundays. If I did, I’d get a jacketing. Our chaps
would say: ‘Well, you _are_ a scurf. _You_ have a round; give another
man a Sunday chance.’ A gentleman once said to me, when I was obligated
to work on a Sunday: ‘Why don’t you leave it off, when you know it
ain’t right?’ ‘Well, sir,’ said I, and he spoke very kind to me,
‘well, sir, I’m working for my dinner, and if you’ll give me 4_s._ or
3_s._ 6_d._, I’ll tumble to your notion and drop it, and I’ll give you
these here cowcumbers,’ (I was working cowcumbers at that time) ‘to do
what you like with, and they cost me half-a-crown.’ In potatoes I don’t
do a great deal, and it’s no great trade. If I did, I should buy at the
warehouses in Tooley-street, where they are sold in sacks of 1 cwt.;
150 lbs. and 200 lbs., at 2_s._ 9_d._ and 3_s._ the cwt. I sell mine,
tidy good, at 3 pound 2_d._, and a halfpenny a pound, but as I don’t do
much, not a bushel a day, I buy at market by the bushel at from 1_s._
6_d._ to 2_s._ I never uses slangs. I sold three times as many potatoes
as I do now four years back. I don’t know why, ’cept it be that the rot
set people again them, and their taste’s gone another way. I sell a few
more greens than I did, but not many. Spinach I don’t do only a little
in it. Celery I’m seldom able to get rid on. It’s more women’s work.
Ing-uns the same.”
I may add that I found the class, who confined their business
principally to the sale of vegetables, the dullest of all the
costermongers. Any man may labour to make 1_s._ 6_d._ of cabbages or
turnips, which cost him 1_s._, when the calculation as to the relative
proportion of measures, &c. is beyond his comprehension.
Pursuing the same mode of calculation as has been heretofore adopted,
we find that the absolute quantity of vegetables sold in the London
streets by the costers is as follows:
20,700,000 lbs. of potatoes (home grown)
39,800,000 „ (foreign)
23,760,133 cabbages,
3,264,800 turnips,
616,666 junks of turnip tops,
601,000 carrots,
567,300 brocoli and cauliflowers,
219,000 bushels of peas,
8,893 „ beans,
22,110 „ french beans,
25,608 dozens of vegetable marrows,
489 dozen bundles of asparagus,
9,120 „ rhubarb,
4,350 „ celery,
561,600 lettuces,
13,291 dozen hands of radishes,
499,533 bushels of onions,
23,600 dozen bunches of spring onions,
10,920 bushels of cucumbers,
3,290 dozen bunches of herbs.
OF THE “ARISTOCRATIC” VEGETABLE-SALE.
In designating these dealers I use a word not uncommon among the
costermongers. These aristocratic sellers, who are not one in twenty,
or perhaps in twenty-five, of the whole body of costermongers, are
generally men of superior manners and better dressed than their
brethren. The following narrative, given to me by one of the body,
shows the nature of the trade:--
“It depends a good deal upon the season and the price, as to what I
begin with in the ‘haristocratic’ way. My rounds are always in the
suburbs. I sell neither in the streets, nor squares in town. I like it
best where there are detached villas, and best of all where there are
kept mistresses. They are the best of all customers to men like me. We
talk our customers over among ourselves, and generally know who’s who.
One way by which we know the kept ladies is, they never sell cast-off
clothes, as some ladies do, for new potatoes or early peas. Now, my
worst customers, as to price, are the ladies--or gentlemen--they’re
both of a kidney--what keeps fashionable schools. _They_ are the people
to drive a bargain, but then they buy largely. Some buy entirely of
costermongers. There’s one gent. of a school-keeper buys so much and
knows so well what o’clock it is, that I’m satisfied he saves many a
pound a year by buying of us ’stead of the greengrocers.
“Perhaps I begin the season in the haristocratic way, with early
lettuces for salads. I carry my goods in handsome baskets, and
sometimes with a boy, or a boy and a girl, to help me. I buy my
lettuces by the score (of heads) when first in, at 1_s._ 6_d._, and
sell them at 1-1/2_d._ each, which is 1_s._ profit on a score. I have
sold twenty, and I once sold thirty score, that way in a day. The
profit on the thirty was 2_l._ 5_s._, but out of that I had to pay
three boys, for I took three with me, and our expenses was 7_s._ But
you must consider, sir, that this is a precarious trade. Such goods are
delicate, and spoil if they don’t go off. I give credit sometimes, if
anybody I know says he has no change. I never lost nothing.
“Then there’s grass (asparagus), and that’s often good money. I buy all
mine at Covent-garden, where it’s sold in bundles, according to the
earliness of the season, at from 5_s._ to 1_s._, containing from six to
ten dozen squibs (heads). These you have to take home, untie, cut off
the scraggy ends, trim, and scrape, and make them level. Children help
me to do this in the court where I live. I give them a few ha’pence,
though they’re eager enough to do it for nothing but the fun. I’ve had
10_s._ worth made ready in half an hour.
“Well, now, sir, about grass, there’s not a coster in London, I’m sure,
ever tasted it; and how it’s eaten puzzles us.” [I explained the manner
in which asparagus was brought to table.] “That’s the ticket, is it,
sir? Well, I was once at the Surrey, and there was some macaroni eaten
on the stage, and I thought grass was eaten in the same way, perhaps;
swallowed like one o’clock,” [rather a favourite comparison among the
costers.]
“I have the grass--it’s always called, when cried in the streets,
‘Spar-row gra-ass’--tied up in bundles of a dozen, twelve to a dozen,
or one over, and for these I never expect less than 6_d._ For a three
or four dozen lot, in a neat sieve, I ask 2_s._ 6_d._, and never take
less than 1_s._ 3_d._ I once walked thirty-five miles with grass, and
have oft enough been thirty miles. I made 7_s._ or 8_s._ a day by it,
and next day or two perhaps nothing, or may-be had but one customer.
I’ve sold half-crown lots, on a Saturday night, for a sixpence; and
it _was_ sold some time back at 2_d._ a bundle, in the New Cut, to
poor people. I dare say some as bought it had been maid-servants and
understood it. I’ve raffled 5_s._ worth of grass in the parlour of a
respectable country inn of an evening.
“The costers generally buy new potatoes at 4_s._ to 5_s._ the bushel,
and cry them at ‘three-pound-tuppence;’ but I’ve given 7_s._ a bushel,
for choice and early, and sold them at 2_d._ a pound. It’s no great
trade, for the bushel may weigh only 50 lb., and at 2_d._ a pound
that’s only 8_s._ 4_d._ The schools don’t buy at all until they’re
1_d._ the pound, and don’t buy in any quantity until they’re 1_s._
6_d._ the 25 lb. One day a school ’stonished me by giving me 2_s._
6_d._ for 25 lb., which is the general weight of the half bushel.
Perhaps the master had taken a drop of something short that morning.
The schools are dreadful screws, to be sure.
“Green peas, early ones, I don’t buy when they first come in, for then
they’re very dear, but when they’re 4_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._ a bushel, and
that’s pretty soon. I can make five pecks of a bushel. Schools don’t
touch peas ’till they’re 2_s._ a bushel.
“Cowcumbers were an aristocratic sale. Four or five years ago they
were looked upon, when first in, and with a beautiful bloom upon them,
as the finest possible relish. But the cholera came in 1849, and
everybody--’specially the women--thought the cholera was in cowcumbers,
and I’ve known cases, foreign and English, sent from the Borough Market
for manure.
“I sell a good many mushrooms. I sometimes can pick up a cheap lot at
Covent Garden. I make them up in neat sieves of three dozen to eight
dozen according to size, and I have sold them at 4_s._ the sieve, and
made half that on each sieve I sold. They are down to 1_s._ or 1_s._
6_d._ a sieve very soon.
“Green walnuts for pickling I sell a quantity of. One day I sold 20_s._
worth--half profit--I got them so cheap, but that was an exception. I
sold them cheap too. One lady has bought a bushel and a half at a time.
For walnut catsup the refuse of the walnut is used; it’s picked up in
the court, where I’ve got children or poor fellows for a few ha’pence
or a pint of beer to help me to peel the walnuts.”
OF ONION SELLING IN THE STREETS.
The sale of onions in the streets is immense. They are now sold at
the markets at an average of 2_s._ a bushel. Two years ago they were
1s., and they have been 4_s._ and up to 7_s._ the bushel. They are now
twisted into “ropes” for street sale. The ropes are of straw, into
which the roots are platted, and secured firmly enough, so that the
ropes can be hung up; these have superseded the netted onions, formerly
sold by the Jew boys. The plaiting, or twisting, is done rapidly by the
women, and a straw-bonnet-maker described it to me as somewhat after
the mode of her trade, only that the top, or projecting portion of the
stem of the onion, was twisted within the straw, instead of its being
plaited close and flat together. The trade in rope onions is almost
entirely in the hands of the Irish women and girls. There are now, it
is said, from 800 to 1000 persons engaged in it. Onion selling can
be started on a small amount of capital, from 6_d._ to 1_s._, which
is no doubt one inducement for those poor persons to resort to it.
The sixpenny ropes, bunches, or strings (I heard each word applied),
contain from three to four dozen; the penny bunches, from six to twenty
roots, according to size; and the intermediate and higher priced
bunches in proportion. Before Christmas, a good many shilling lots
are sold. Among the costermongers I heard this useful root--which the
learned in such matters have pronounced to be, along with the mushroom,
the foundation of every sauce, ancient or modern--called ing-guns,
ing-ans, injens, injyens, inions, innons, almost everything but onions.
An Irishwoman, apparently of thirty-five, but in all probability
younger--she did not know her age--gave me the following account. Her
face, with its strongly-marked Irish features, was almost purpled
from constant exposure to the weather. She was a teetotaller. She
was communicative and garrulous, even beyond the average of her
countrywomen. She was decently clad, had been in London fifteen years
(she thought) having been brought from Ireland, _viâ_ Bristol, by
her parents (both dead). She herself was a widow, her husband, “a
bricklayer” she called him (probably a bricklayer’s labourer), having
died of the cholera in 1849. I take up her statement from that period:
“Yes, indeed, sir, he died--the heavins be his bed!--and he was
prepared by Father M----. We had our thrials togither, but sore’s been
the cross and heavy the burthin since it plased God to call him. Thin,
there’s the two childer, Biddy and Ned. They’ll be tin and they’ll be
eight come their next burreth-days, ’plase the Lorrud. They can hilp
me now, they can. They sells ing-uns as well. I ropes ’em for ’em. How
is ing-uns roped? Shure, thin--but it’s not mocking me your ’onnur
is--shure, thin, a gintleman like you, that can write like a horrus
a-galloping, and perhaps is as larned as a praste, glory be to God!
_must_ know how to rope ing-uns! Poor people can do it. Some say it’s
a sacrit, but that’s all a say, or there couldn’t be so many ropes
a-silling. I buy the sthraw at a sthraw-daler’s; twopinn’orth at a
time; that’ll make six or twilve ropes, according to what they are,
sixpinny or what. It’s as sthraight as it can be grown, the sthraw,
that it is indeed. Och, sir, we’ve had many’s the black day, me and
the childer, poor things; it’s thim I care about, but--God’s name be
praised!--we’ve got on somehow. Another poor woman--she’s a widdur
too, hilp her!--and me has a 2_s._ room for the two of us. We’ve our
siprate furnithur. She has only hersilf, but is fond of the childer, as
you or your lady--bliss her! if you’ve got one--might be, if you was
with them. I can read a little mysilf, at laste I could oncte, and I
gits them a bit o’ schoolin’ now and thin, whin I can, of an evenin’
mostly. I can’t write a letther; I wish I could. Shure, thin, sir, I’ll
tell you the thruth--we does best on ing-uns. Oranges is nixt, and nuts
isn’t near so good. The three of us now makes 1_s._ and sometimes 1_s._
6_d._ a day, and that’s grand doin’s. We may sill bechuxt us from two
to three dozin ropes a day. I’m quick at roping the ing-uns. I never
noted how many ropes an hour. I buy them of a thradesman, an honist
gintleman, I know, and I see him at mass ivery Sunday, and he gives me
as many as he can for 1_s._ or what it is. We has 1_d._, plase God,
on ivery 6_d._; yis, sir, perhaps more sometimes. I’ll not tell your
’onnur a bit of a lie. And so we now get a nice bit o’ fish, with a
bit of liver on a Sunday. I sell to the thradesmen, and the lodgers of
them, about here (Tottenham-court-road), and in many other parruts, for
we thravels a dale. The childer always goes the same round. We follows
one another. I’ve sould in the sthreets ever since I’ve been in this
counthry.”
The greatest sum of money expended by the poor upon any vegetable
(after potatoes) is spent upon onions--99,900_l._ being annually
devoted to the purchase of that article. To those who know the habits
of the poor, this will appear in no way singular--a piece of bread and
an onion being to the English labourer what bread and an apple or a
bunch of grapes is to the French peasant--often his dinner.
OF POT-HERBS AND CELERY.
I use the old phrase, _pot-herbs_, for such productions as sage, thyme,
mint, parsley, sweet marjoram, fennel, (though the last is rarely sold
by the street-people), &c.; but “herbs” is the usual term. More herbs,
such as agrimony, balm (balsam), wormwood, tansy, &c., used to be sold
in the streets. These were often used for “teas,” medicinally perhaps,
except tansy, which, being a strong aromatic, was used to flavour
puddings. Wormwood, too, was often bought to throw amongst woollen
fabrics, as a protective against the attack of moths.
The street herb-trade is now almost entirely in the hands of
Irishwomen, and is generally carried on during the autumn and winter
at stalls. With it, is most commonly united the sale of celery. The
herbs are sold at the several markets, usually in shilling lots, but a
quarter of a shilling lot may be purchased. The Irishwoman pursues a
simple method of business. What has cost her 1_s._ she divides into 24
lots, each of 1_d._, or she will sell half of a lot for a halfpenny. An
Irishwoman said to me:
“Thrade isn’t good, sir; it falls and it falls. I don’t sell so many
herrubs or so much ciliry as I did whin mate was higher. Poor people
thin, I’ve often been said it, used to buy bones and bile them for
broth with ciliry and the beautiful herrubs. Now they buys a bit of
mate and ates it without brothing. It’s good one way and it’s bad
another. Only last Sathurday night my husband--and a good husband
he’s to me, though he is a London man, for he knows how to make a
bargain--he bought a bit of mutton, afore the stroke of twilve, in
Newgit-markit, at 2-1/2_d._ the pound. I don’t know what parrut it
was. I don’t understand that, but he does, and tills me how to cook
it. He has worruk at the docks, but not very rigular. I think I sill
most parrusley. Whin frish herrings is chape, some biles them with
parrusley, and some fries them with ing-uns. No, sir; I don’t make
sixpence a day; not half-a-crown a week, I’m shure. Whin herrubs isn’t
in--and they’re autumn and winther things, and so is ciliry--I sills
anything; gooseberries and currints, or anything. If I’d had a family,
I couldn’t have had a shoe to my futt.”
GROSS VALUE OF THE FRUIT AND VEGETABLES SOLD ANNUALLY IN THE LONDON
STREETS.
To complete the present account of the costermonger’s trade, we must
now estimate the money value of the fruit and vegetables disposed
of by them throughout the year. The money annually spent in fish
by the humbler portion of the metropolitan population comes to, as
we have seen, very nearly one million five hundred thousand pounds
sterling--the sum laid out in fruit and vegetables we shall find is but
little more than a third of this amount.
GREEN FRUIT.
377,500 bushels of apples, at six a
penny or 4_s._ per bush.
(288 to the bushel) £75,500
193,700 bushels of pears, at 5_s._ per
bushel 48,400
1,215,360 lbs. of cherries,
at 2_d._ per lb. 10,000
11,700 bushels of plums, at 1_d._ per
half pint 6,240
100 bushels of greengages, at
1-1/2_d._ per half pint 80
548 bushels of damsons, at 1-1/2_d._
per half pint 430
2,450 bushels of bullace, at 1-1/2_d._
per half pint 1,950
207,500 bushels of gooseberries, at
3_d._ per quart 83,000
85,500 sieves of red currants, at
1_d._ per pint (three half-sieves
to the bushel) 15,200
13,500 sieves of black currants, at
1_d._ per pint (three half-sieves
to the bushel) 2,400
3,000 sieves of white currants, at
1_d._ per pint (three half-sieves
to the bushel) 530
763,750 pottles of strawberries, at
2_d._ per pottle 6,360
1,760 pottles of raspberries, at 6_d._
per pottle 40
30,485 pottles of mulberries, at 6_d._
per pottle 760
6,000 bushels of hazel nuts, at
3/4_d._ per half pint 2,400
17,280 lbs. of filberts, at 3_d._ per lb. 200
26,563 lbs. of grapes, at 4_d._ per lb. 440
20,000 pine apples, at 6_d._ each 500
15,400,000 oranges, at two for 1_d._ 32,000
154,000 lemons, at two for 1_d._ 320
24,000 bushels of Spanish and
Barcelona nuts, at 6_d._
per quart 19,200
3,000 bushels of Brazil nuts (1500
to the bushel), at fifteen
for 1_d._ £1,250
6,500 bushels of chestnuts (1500
to the bushel), at fifteen
for 1_d._ 2,700
24,000 bushels of walnuts (1750 to
the bushel), at ten for 1_d._ 17,500
400,000 coker-nuts, at 3_d._ each 5,000
--------
Total expended yearly in green fruit £332,400
DRY FRUIT.
7,000 lbs. of shell almonds, at 20
a penny (320 to the lb.) £460
37,800 lbs. of raisins, at 2_d._ per lb. 300
24,300 lbs. of figs, at 2_d._ per lb. 200
4,800 lbs. of prunes, at 2_d._ per lb. 40
------
Total expended yearly on dry fruit £1,000
VEGETABLES.
60,500,000 lbs. of potatoes, at 5lbs.
for 2_d._ £100,800
23,760,000 cabbages, at 1/2_d._ each 49,500
3,264,800 turnips, at 1-1/2_d._ per doz. 1,700
601,000 carrots, at 2-1/2_d._ per doz. 520
567,300 brocoli and cauliflowers, at
1_d._ per head 2,360
616,666 junks of turnip tops, at 4_d._
per junk 10,270
219,000 bushels of peas, at 1_s._ 6_d._
per bushel 16,420
8,890 bushels of beans, at 1_s._ 6_d._
per bushel 660
22,110 bushels of French beans, at
6_d._ per peck, or 2_s._ per
bushel 2,210
25,608 vegetable marrows, at 1/2_d._
each 50
489 dozen bundles of asparagus,
at 2_s._ 6_d._ per bundle
(4_d._ or 6_d._ a doz. heads) 730
9,120 dozen bundles of rhubarb,
at 2_s._ 6_d._ per doz. 1,140
4,350 dozen bundles of celery, at
3_d._ per bundle 650
561,602 lettuces, at 3 a penny 780
13,291 dozen hands of radishes, at
3 bunches for 1_d._, and
6 bunches to the hand 1,330
499,530 bushels of onions, at 4_s._ per
bushel 99,900
10,920 bushels of cucumbers, at
1_d._ each (60 to the bush.) 2,730
3,290 dozen bundles of herbs, at
3_d._ a bundle 490
--------
Total expended yearly in vegetables £292,240
Putting the above sums together we have the following aggregate
result:--
Expended yearly in green fruit £332,400
Expended yearly in dry fruit 1,000
Expended yearly in vegetables 292,240
--------
Gross sum taken annually by the }
London costermongers for fruit } £625,640
and vegetables }
Then adding the above to the gross amount received by the
street-sellers of fish, which we have before seen comes to as much as
£1,460,850, we have for the annual income of the London costermongers
no less a sum than £2,086,490.
OF THE STATIONARY STREET-SELLERS OF FISH, FRUIT, AND VEGETABLES.
OF THE NUMBER OF STREET STALLS.
Thus far we have dealt only with the itinerant dealers in fish, fruit,
or vegetables; but there are still a large class of street-sellers, who
obtain a living by the sale of the same articles at some fixed locality
in the public thoroughfares; and as these differ from the others in
certain points, they demand a short special notice here. First, as
to the number of stalls in the streets of London, I caused personal
observations to be made; and in a walk of 46 miles, 632 stalls were
counted, which is at the rate of very nearly 14 to the mile. This, too,
was in bad weather,--was not on a Saturday night,--and at a season when
the fruit-sellers all declare that “things is dull.” The routes taken
in this inquiry were:--No. 1, from Vauxhall to Hatton-garden; No. 2,
from Baker-street to Bermondsey; No. 3, from Blackwall to Brompton; No.
4, from the Hackney-road to the Edgeware-road. I give the results.
F. FR. V. M. T.
No. 1 9 28 5 7 49
„ 2 37 50 4 14 105
„ 3 90 153 30 40 313
„ 4 75 52 23 15 165
-- -- -- -- --
211 283 62 76 632
F. denotes fish-stalls; Fr. fruit-stalls; V. vegetable-stalls; M.
miscellaneous; and T. presents the total.
The miscellaneous stalls include peas-soup, pickled whelks, sweetmeats,
toys, tin-ware, elder-wine, and jewellery stands. Of these, the
toy-stalls were found to be the most numerous; sweetmeats the next;
tin-ware the next; while the elder-wine stalls were least numerous.